Dog Tags
by hobbitkisses
Summary: AU: Sherlock finds John's old dog tags in the rubbish bin. Fluff and a touch of angst - unedited but complete.


**Dog Tags**

* * *

_**hero: definition**_

_noun, plural: **heroes **_

_1\. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities._

* * *

The case isn't much worse than their regular ones. It's complicated and confusing, the murderer clever and quick, just like Sherlock wants them to be. He has been wired for weeks, whirling around the crime scene with a fierce, passionate gleam to his eye that's both frightening and delightful. On those occasions, John can't suppress his awed smiles and breathless compliments, and it gains him those looks from Sherlock that clearly says "I'm-trying-to-hide-my-happiness-with-amusement-to-mock-how-big-of-an-idiot-you-sound-like-because-I-need-to-seem-terrifying-and-clever-in-front-of-these-people" and those small, genuine smiles skirting around the edges of his mouth that makes the doctor's heart clench.

The crime scene is a gigantic mansion. It's positively reeking with old money, cold and ancient, positioned a little outside London. The victim is a young mother who had lived in the house with her six year old son, and the main suspect is the sister of the deceased woman. Sherlock is convinced that she isn't the killer – she's a tiny, young thing, not older than twenty-five, fragile and timorous since her older sister's death. John doesn't need the detective's deductions to know that she is innocent.

Sherlock and John go to examine the mansion by themselves, looking for clues without what the detective describes as "the dulling presence of below average-minded people in uniforms holding no meaning". But their wish to be alone isn't granted; they're greeted by the killer's bullets from the shadows in the enormous house.

Of course, the consulting detective has brought his own gun – so has John. He runs off, his voice echoing in the dark halls as he talks out loud to the invisible murderer, his words followed by more bullets.

John is carefully looking around, gun raised and ready to fire, listening to Sherlock's subtly teasing words. Then a door suddenly jerks open to his left, and he whips around, finding his gun pointed at a kid.

His skin has the same pale colour of the body he and Sherlock had examined at St. Bart's, and the same hair. It's falling in to his wide, terrified eyes, and John immediately puts away the gun.

"Hi," He says awkwardly, completely off-guard. "What are you doing here?"

Another shot is heard, and Sherlock's voice rings loudly:

"It wasn't meant to be murder, was it? You were caught by surprise."

The child whimpers.

John licks his lips, eyes flicking around warily – the shot is closer than the last one, he notes anxiously.

Then he lowers himself, placing his hands on his thighs and adopting a kinder look on his face as he watches the boy.

"Are you Sam? Sam Jacobsen?"

The kid looks too terrified to respond, and the fear in his eyes is only fuelled as another shot is fired, even closer this time. Sherlock doesn't miss a beat.

"Oh, but you were ready, of course you were – you're clever, a genius even, aren't you? You dislike being underestimated. You dislike people giving Jean Jacobsen, that fragile, silly girl, all the credit for your work. It was very clever, even I admit it – just not clever enough."

John listens to his words warily – after spending so much time with Sherlock, he can hear the almost inaudible edge to his voice, that skirting worry underneath the cool flatness. The doctor bites his lip, looking back at the boy, who seems to want to shrink away.

"I'm John Watson. I'm a doctor," John tells him kindly, offering a tight smile. "I'm here to help you. Can you tell me your name?"

The kid hesitates, but then confesses, in a quiet, scared voice:

"Sammy."

"All right, Sammy," The doctor says slowly. Definitely the victim's daughter, then. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be with your grandmother?"

Sam opens his mouth to answer, but he's cut off by the sound of a bullet being fired again. John waits for Sherlock's voice, holding his breath, and exhales in quiet relief when it pierces the following silence:

"Be careful – you might run out of bullets."

Refilled with both new hope and anxiety, because both Sherlock and the killer are definitely coming closer, John reaches out a hand to the victim's son, smiling as softly as he can muster.

"Let's get out of here, shall we? It's getting quite noisy, don't you think, Sammy?"

The boy nods, eyes flicking between John's hand and his face. John notices that he's clutching a toy giraffe to his chest desperately – a dirty, ragged thing he probably has loved for years – and adds:

"That's a very nice giraffe. Now you hold on to it tight so that you don't lose it, all right?"

Sam looks at his toy, then back at John, and the faintest of smiles passes his lips as he nods again and takes the doctor's outstretched hand. John grins kindly and gives the boy a reassuring squeeze.

"All right, Sammy. Wait here, just for a moment – I'll be right back." He tells the boy firmly. He lets go of Sam's hand, pulling out his gun again and stepping further in to the hall.

There is no sound to be heard, and John stares ahead, where the hall continues shortly, until it's divided in to a corridor that stretches out of sight to his left and right. They are trapped in a dead end if the murderer will arrive, he realizes miserably – and it's the only direction they can run in.

He turns back to Sam, who is watching him curiously with wide, fearful eyes.

"Can you run quickly, Sammy?" He asks, trying not to sound as worried as he feels. "I think we're going to have to run. But you look like a strong boy – you can do it, right?"

The boy nods, looking a little calmer now. He opens his mouth to say something, looking a little confident now – maybe deciding to tell John that he plays basketball with his friends in school and always wins because he's the quickest, but John never gets to hear it.

His back is against the hall, because he's facing the boy, but he isn't standing right in front of him. He's a little too far to the left.

Sam doesn't see it because he's looking at John, and John is facing him and too much to the left and suddenly Sam is on his back, unseeing eyes fixed at the ceiling instead. There's a bullet buried deep in the flesh of his chest.

The rest of the night goes on in a hazy blur. Sherlock appears a moment later, seeing the dead child and the doctor crouched beside him, instantly deducing what happened. He whips out his phone, dials Lestrade and snarls loudly that he needs to get over there right _now. _

Then they wait a few minutes, Sherlock still frozen in the far end of the hall, and John repeating every kind of act that could have saved the little boy if the killer's hand had been just a little bit less steady. Heavy silence reigns.

In the end, the paramedics Lestrade brought with him decide that the boy's already dead. Without any explanation for the D.I., Sherlock leads a painfully silent John home. He falls asleep quickly despite everything – an ability he has adopted from his military service. But before that, he digs out the box with his military belongings that's always hidden in the back of his closet. He rummages through it a little, until he finds what he's looking for.

That night, John bins his dog tags.

* * *

Sherlock finds them by accident.

He's rummaging through the rubbish bin, searching for the toenails John decided to throw away without his allowance, even though Sherlock thoroughly has explained how immensely necessary they are for Ms Jacobsen's alibi, to prove that it isn't her, but her mother's new lover who committed the homicide. He vaguely recalls his flatmate giving up the fight, but a few hours later, when the consulting detective was at St. Bart's, he had received an angry text message about how John is going to move out if he ever finds toenails in the kettle again. Sherlock had been too distracted by examining the victim of the case's body to care too much about it, which he now realizes was a horrid mistake – his disinterest had apparently caused John to bin the evidence Ms Jacobsen so desperately needs.

John is still asleep; he rarely awakes before nine o'clock on weekends if he can avoid it. He also usually shaves and showers on Saturday mornings, which means he won't come down to the kitchen for breakfast until around ten o'clock. It's still two hours left to his awakening, and Sherlock has decided that everything will go much smoother if he finds the toenails and hides them before John will notice and start an argument about it.

A flare of triumph flickers through him as he finds the small, plastic bag containing the toenails. He's just about to stand up when something catches his eye, gleaming metallically between all the rubbish.

Sherlock immediately leans forward, the toenails forgotten. He reaches out long, slender fingers and pulls out the item. It is a thick, slightly rusty chain, and attached to it-

Oh. _Oh. _Sherlock stares at the cool metal, resting innocently in palm. After several long moments, he gracefully stands up and let long strides take him to the door to John's room.

In front of his door, he hesitates. He stares at it blankly, then turns around and walks away a few steps, puts his hands on his hips, then whips back around and shoots it a glare.

At last, he goes back in to the kitchen and sits down by his microscope again, clutching the dog tags in his hand, waiting for John to wake up.

As predicted, the doctor comes down two hours later. As soon as Sherlock hears him pad down the stairs, he stands up, wiring the chain of the dog tags around his fingers and letting the now warm metal rest against his palm.

John looks puzzled at finding the detective already glaring at him as he enters the sitting room. His eyes flicker around the flat, obviously looking for trouble, and then he asks hesitantly:

"Is something wrong?"

Sherlock is prepared. He holds up his hand, unfolding his fingers.

"I found these in the rubbish bin. I assume they're yours."

It takes a moment before realization dawns on John's confused face. He instantly wipes his expression blank and crosses his arms.

"How did you find those, Sherlock?"

There's an edge to his voice that they're both aware of.

"By looking," Sherlock answers curtly. He takes a few long steps until he's closer to John. "Why were they in the rubbish bin?"

John watches him, locking their eyes. Sherlock doesn't look away – he never does, but this time, John doesn't, either.

"Why were you looking in the rubbish bin?"

The detective waves a hand dismissively.

"Trying to find my toenails. Anyway-"

"Those toenails I threw away yesterday morning?" John asks incredulously, frowning slightly.

"Obviously, John. Do keep up," Sherlock huffs, irritated, but he's aware of his curiosity being given away in his eyes as they watch John's face carefully. "Why did you bin your dog tags?"

Hesitation flickers across his face, however briefly, because a moment later he briskly brushes past Sherlock and in to the kitchen, saying:

"That's none of your business, Sherlock." He has a habit of making tea when he's feeling awkward or nervous, and he starts doing so now.

Sherlock watches him, unmoving. His own fingertips are pressed against the metal, hand clenched around it.

"You usually never bring out your military belongings." He states slowly. "They're always tucked away in that box in the back of your closet."

"You a-wait, how did you know that?" John cuts himself off, looking at the detective.

It takes a moment of staring, but then the doctor exclaims:

"_Sherlock!_"

"I needed to," Sherlock explains helpfully. "It was a very important matter-"

"You know, if you're looking for something in my room, you could just _ask _me?" John says, glaring at him.

"I know you well enough to know that your reaction would be alike to this, so asking is not an option," The detective points out.

John rolls his eyes. Silence reigns.

"You never wear these," Sherlock says suddenly, looking at the dog tags. "How come?"

John becomes still, just for a moment – his shoulders tense unmistakably. Sherlock watches him quietly.

"Why would I?" He says in a low voice.

Sherlock stares.

"They're yours. They belong around your neck," He states flatly.

"They don't belong around anyone's neck anymore, Sherlock," The doctor replies, a sort of cutting edge to his voice – it's sharp and bordering on agitated, but still just as low and steely.

The detective watches him as he starts pouring the tea in to two cups. He can't see what the cause of the strange way John is behaving could be – why would he deny such a simple fact as that the tags are his own?

"The left," John suddenly blurts. Sherlock thinks he sees the doctor's hands trembling slightly. "Too far to the left. If I had been standing just a little-" He stops abruptly, sucking in a shuddering breath. "I wasn't paying attention. I should have been more careful."

Sherlock blinks. Oh. _Oh. _

He doesn't know why he hasn't seen it before – John is a very sentimental man, always feeling morally obligated to do everything he can to help others and experiencing strong guilt when he knows he hasn't done enough. Sherlock has always lacked these feelings, and honestly doesn't understand them either – but he knows John, and he understands John, and why hasn't he seen it earlier?

He looks down at the dog tags in his hand. Clearly they symbolise something to John – heroism, bravery, the ability to protect and save people.

Sherlock doesn't understand this, but he understands John.

He moves without thinking. Swiftly, he steps forward, bracing his hands against the cabinets above the sink, effectively trapping John in the small space between it and himself. The doctor turns around and winces slightly as he finds himself staring at Sherlock's face.

"It wasn't your fault, John," He says calmly, voice low-pitched and quiet. He can't be sentimental – it's not in his nature – but he can give John facts, facts that he already should know, but Sherlock is willing to be patient for him to understand. "You didn't kill the child – the murderer did. Not you."

John's face is blank, but then the mask slips and his eyes are tired, so immensely tired and experienced and old that Sherlock feels an odd twist in his chest.

"Sherlock, please let it go," He says, and his voice is awfully weary, but not quite sad. "I'm asking you, just this once. All right?"

He's pleading, and Sherlock blinks. John doesn't look away, though.

The detective steps back.

His flatmate turns back to his tea, and Sherlock's brain is working ferociously now, accessing the new information. Something strange and uncomfortable nags at his heart as he thinks of how John shows such clear signs of not believing the detective's poor attempt of comforting, but very real, words.

"I don't, um," Sherlock tugs at his suit, hesitates uncharacteristically, and then reaches out the tags toward John, "Here."

John stares at them for a moment, but then turns away, opening the fridge and not even flinching at the foot inside.

"Throw them back in the rubbish bin. I don't need them anymore."

Sherlock stares at the back of his blond head, glances at the dog tags, and then pockets them.

* * *

The air is charged for the rest of the day.

John actively avoids Sherlock's eye. He is amazed by the fact that the detective actually has surrendered and stopped asking questions, but also wary – it's Sherlock, dammit, and his almost _kind _back-off is quite unsettling.

He spends a quite unproductive day in his armchair – he pays his phone bill (always expensive because of his constant texting with his flatmate), flicks through his emails (just one new, from Sarah – she wonders if he can take an extra shift next Monday, because Ivan is visiting his relatives in Yorkshire) and orders in from the nice Chinese place down the road (he doesn't have the energy to go shopping, and he's quite sure that Sherlock has his credit card, anyway).

Sherlock left the flat soon after their quiet, strange "argument" about the dog tags. John strongly suspects he is at St. Bart's, examining the body of the deceased woman from the case, or stealing unsolved case files from Lestrade. Not that it matters, anyway. John is just happy not to need facing his questions.

When he comes back, he's restless – John sees that immediately. He spins out of his coat and scarf, hooks them behind the door, tugs on the already perfect line of his suit, paces around, eyes flickering around impatiently. The doctor doesn't acknowledge him – he sits quietly, reading his paper.

Sherlock walks over to the window, stares, enters the kitchen, stares, and at last throws himself down on the couch, fingers tapping his knee. His gaze wanders over to the doctor, pale eyes burning in to the side of his head.

John ignores him. The detective gets up, walks over to the hall again, spins around and stares at John.

"John," Sherlock says.

The doctor lets the upper edge of his paper fall casually.

"Yes?"

"Are you…" The detective seems to struggle. It's quite amusing. "Are you all right?"

John smiles coldly.

"Why wouldn't I be?" He answers, voice level.

Sherlock crosses his arms, uncrosses them, looks around, and then glares back at John.

"I didn't mean to upset you earlier," The words seem to cause him pain, because his face is almost twisted in a grimace. "I… Apologize for that."

"Apology accepted," John replies with another tight, chilly smile. He returns to his paper.

The tension in the air doesn't go away.

That night, John wakes up sweaty and panting, flashes of dead soldiers and blood-stained sand on the back of his eyelids. He slumps against the wall and blinks away tears, because there was also a dead boy there, with a ragged toy giraffe in his hands.

He's tired, tired of trying to be a hero when Sherlock himself – the brilliant, ignorant genius who knows everything except that the earth goes around the sun – doesn't think they exist, and tired of being reminded of the fact that he felt like a hero, _was_ a hero, once, but not anymore.

And of course, Sherlock hears him, and he actually _knocks _on the door and quietly asks, in his deep, rough voice:

"John?"

John doesn't answer.

Sherlock doesn't enter.

Neither of them sleeps.

* * *

Sherlock and John fights.

John finds the dog tags in Sherlock's trousers as he's going to wash them, and he's mad because he told the detective to bin them. Sherlock says that he knew John would want them later, and then John is yelling that Sherlock knows nothing about him and has no right to read and deduce him like he does with everybody else. It hits Sherlock in a nerve he didn't know he had, and it causes a flare of hurt he was sure he couldn't experience, and he realizes he's unravelling dangerously and starts shouting back.

But then John slips.

"Because I _care_, Sherlock! I care about it and I even care about what _you _say, you bloody git, and I'm naïve enough to expect you to do the same!"

"What have I ever said that you've cared about?!" Sherlock bites back. "You don't even _understand_ what I say, with your dull, unused mind!"

Why does he have to be so _stupid?_

"I understood that heroes don't exist, didn't I?!" John shouts. He looks like he's going to continue, but then his face drains of colour as he realizes what he just said and what he meant, and his voice falters.

Sherlock blinks. Heavy silence settles.

John clenches the back of the couch, swallows hard, shuts his eyes and then snaps them open, staring at Sherlock. His jaw is clenched and his eyes dark.

Sherlock stares back.

After several long moments, he suddenly blurts:

"Not you, you idiot."

John blinks.

"You're a soldier. Do you really think anything could change that?" He says, and he sounds frustrated to his own ears, but it doesn't matter because John is looking at him with wide, expressive eyes.

He strides over to the doctor, grabs his shoulders squarely, spins him around and fastens the dog tags around his neck in one, swift motion.

"Even heroes make mistakes, I would think. You thinking you're not one would be one of your worse mistakes, but nothing will ever change the fact that you're a hero, John. It amazes me that you didn't know this before."

A hesitant smile blooms on John's face, and Sherlock's own lips twitches slightly. The doctor fingers at his tags absent-mindedly, resting on his woolly jumper. Then he tucks them underneath his shirt, out of sight, and Sherlock turns around to leave abruptly when fingers curl around his wrist.

"Sherlock," John says, slightly hesitating but eyes earnest and warm when they lock with his own, "I-Thanks."

"Any time," The detective replies coolly, but it takes surprisingly much effort when John's eyes are trained on him in that way.

John looks surprised, but licks his lips and then nods. The hand on Sherlock's wrist doesn't loosen. He won't admit it, but the simple gesture feels as intoxicating as a great case.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," John says quietly, his voice low and deeper than usual, which sends an odd shiver down the detective's spine. "I didn't-Well. Sorry."

He bats down his gaze embarrassedly.

Sherlock merely nods, still aware of the warm fingers curled around his wrist. He swallows, watching the blush on the doctor's cheeks, but John doesn't let go.

"That child," Sherlock starts, and pauses, clearing his throat. Struggles. "He was lucky to spend his last moments in your presence."

John stares at him, wide-eyed, and Sherlock meets his gaze as levelly as he can muster. Then, abruptly, John brings the detective's hand to his mouth and presses a quick, chaste kiss to his palm.

Sherlock feels himself stare openly, but the doctor only flashes an abashed smile without quite meeting his eyes before quickly letting go and leaving for the kitchen.

The detective's fingers curl around his palm carefully, softly touching the still tingling skin, and then he jerks his head to stare at John, who has his back against him, making tea in the kitchen, a sliver of metal glinting around his neck.

* * *

**edit:**

_**hero:**** definition**_

_noun, plural: **heroes **_

_2\. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heoric qualities or has performed a heroic act and is_  
_regarded as modeal or ideal._


End file.
